[Bug]: Account linking process with Gocardless times out before completion

[andregulbrandsen]

Verified issue does not already exist?

• I have searched and found no existing issue

What happened?

After having added secrets from Gocardless to Actual and trying to create a new linked account or link an existing account (both equally end with the same problem) a new tab opens for Gocardless. I go through the regular process and end up authenticating and authorizing the connection with my bank. After successfully authorizing the connection, the tab hangs for several minutes (normally ~15 minutes) before closing. After 10 minutes (ie. before the bank tab closes) the Actual tab reports that the process has timed out.

I have verified that Gocardless can connect to my bank as it works in the Gocardless developer portal. I reached out to Gocardless support that verified my connection and told me that authorization with the bank works fine and that they succesfully get data back from my linking request, but before that happens, Actual has timed out. Gocardless suggests increasing the time-out window to allow for a slow integration between Gocardless and the bank. I have tried setting a starting balance on the account in the hopes that that would reduce the number of transactions and thus reduce the required time frame for linking, but it makes no difference.

I have attempted to reach out to the Discord community to no avail.

How can we reproduce the issue?

Link an existing account or create a new linked account. Go through the process and if the loading from the bank back to Gocardless takes more than 10 minutes, Actual times out regardless of (later) success.

I've tried both with local docker hosting as well as Pikapods. I've tried with multiple browsers; Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Edge Android, same result.

Where are you hosting Actual?

Pikapods

What browsers are you seeing the problem on?

Microsoft Edge

Operating System

Windows 11

[Scandiravian]

I'm experiencing the same issue with "bank sync". I have three linked accounts and each time I try to sync them, at most one of the accounts are getting synced.

[PhilippCh]

Same thing happens for me since today. Yesterday the initial linking was working fine, today - testing in a new Actual instance, it stays forever on the 'Waiting for GoCardless' screen with tons of POST requests to /account-data in the server logs.

[bheart3k]

Same thing for me. I am able to synchronize ing, but Ibercaja (spain bank) always ends up in time out.

[andregulbrandsen]

Issue persists in v25.3.1. Have not found a workaround.

[MatissJanis]

👋 Hey folks!

Have you reached out to gocardless about the issue? If they don't "ping" back Actual with success status then there is not much we can do on our end.

[andregulbrandsen]

@MatissJanis thanks for reaching out on this issue. I have indeed been in touch with gocardless about this. From what I understood, they are returning a positive signal, but not until they get the load from the bank, by which time Actual has already timed out and is no longer listening for data from Gocardless. I'm more than happy to provide additional details, but would need some guidance on what you need and how to gather the information.

[MatissJanis]

That's very helpful; thanks!

The timeout logic is here:

actual/packages/loot-core/src/server/accounts/app.ts

Line 559 in 77949ad

if (Date.now() - startTime >= 1000 * 60 * 10) {

It's currently set to 10 minutes - which is already quite long. I would find it surprising if raising it even more solved the issue.

[andregulbrandsen]

What would be the best way to verify if it does indeed help to increase the timeout for someone not well versed in the technical components involved in building the app from source?

[MatissJanis]

@andregulbrandsen you can use this demo link. I raised the timeout to 1h there.

Link it to your server and try running bank sync. Just remember to back-up your budget file before doing that in case something goes wrong.

Though - even if this does in fact solve the issue for you - I don't think we'd merge the change. 1h timeout is an absurdly long time.

[andregulbrandsen]

@MatissJanis Just tested with the demo link, and would you know, after ~12 mins it linked the accounts just beautifully :D Perhaps merging with 1h timeout is excessive, but extending perhaps to 20 minutes would help with scenarios such as mine? Or even better some kind of mechanism for use configurable timeout for these corner cases?

[MatissJanis]

20 minutes is quite excessive too. TBH I find the current timeout of 10 minutes too high as well. Nobody should be forced to wait so long for the accounts to link.

However, I get that GoCardless sometimes is exceptionally slow due to downstream bank constraints.. so I think a good solution here would be to keep (or possibly reduce) the default 10 minute timeout. And then have a better handling of the timeout. Instead of fully stopping the polling operation - continue doing it, but add another informational message to the UI. Something along the lines of:

Linking this account is taking longer than expected. You can keep this page open with hopes that eventually it will work, but it's quite likely that something has gone wrong downstream in Gocardless and thus linking this account at this time is not possible.

[andregulbrandsen]

I think that's a fair solution, as it will keep the user informed while still allowing for extremely slow cases such as mine. Perhaps add a note that the user should reach out to gocardless for support?

[MatissJanis]

Yea, I think that's a good idea. Either way - I'm not committing to doing this myself. We now have a proposed path forward and anyone in the community can pick this up an send a PR with the improvement.